Free Too Wicked to Marry by Susan Sizemore

told herself she'd tripped him on purpose, a defensive move to break his hold on her, but she wasn't at all sure why she'd done it, or if she'd done it, and she was still wrapped tightly in Martin's embrace. His lips no longer covered hers, but that lessened her awareness of him not one whit. He was so very… hard and large and male. His skin was so warm, and his scent pervasively intoxicating.
    "This is not a bit like wrestling with my brothers," she heard herself say, breathless and full of surprised wonder.
    They were so close, his chuckle vibrated through both of them. "I should certainly hope not, my love."
    There he was, using that word again. As though he had every right to. As if she had a right to be loved by him. She was going to have to correct his mistake, and soon. This was hardly a position in which to begin the conversation.
    "Marry me," he said before she could begin. "Marry me today, my darling Abigail."
    There he went with that damned name again! The name that damned her. She was up and off him in an instant. He climbed almost as quickly to his feet as she backed swiftly away.
    "Good lord, girl, what's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong? Tell me." Martin held a hand out to her, but she shook her head and dodged away rather than let him touch her. Martin watched the look of haunted revulsion only deepen as she looked at him. His heart sank, and his hopes very nearly went with it. "Is it me?" he asked, voice rough with pain. "Have I ruined myself for you with my philandering? Am I truly too wicked to many?"
    Harriet gasped and barely managed to bite back her instant defense of him. Martin Kestrel had just handed her a weapon she could use to drive him away. The days he'd spent looking for her had clearly put some cracks in his self-assurance. If she had any sense of self-preservation, she would boldly assert that she indeed found his sexual escapades repulsive. Only she didn't have any sense where the man was concerned; she'd had to leave him to realize how much he was a part of her very soul. She was about to hurt him, she had to, but she would not hurt him with a lie. She only prayed that she would not have to wound him with too much truth to make him go away. Martin Kestrel was a tenacious man.
    "Wicked? No," she said. "You aren't the one who is wicked. You I haven't been completely truthful with you."
    "Really?" he said, and smiled as he said it. "I'm shocked. Tell me what awful lie you're trying to put between us."
    It annoyed her that he tried not to take the moment seriously. She lifted her head sharply and looked him in the eye. "My parents were not wed when I was born."
    Though she felt no shame about it, it was the truth. As much a truth as the fact that Christopher and Lucy were adopted and Anna was a ward. They were all equally loved and respected in her parents' decidedly irregular household. However, being illegitimate was not looked upon with such leniency out in the wider world. Martin should be shocked and repulsed that a person of such ignoble birth had lived in his house, taught his daughter, dared to lift her head and speak her mind to a man infinitely above her in birth and breeding.
    Instead he shrugged. "So you started out life as a bastard."
    "Yes."
    "How interesting." He rubbed his jaw with his thumb as glanced back down the hill, toward the manor house hidden by its surrounding trees. "That explains it."
    "You are supposed to be repudiating and reviling me, Martin." When he didn't respond to this, Harriet let her curiosity get the better of her. "Explains what?"
    "Your striking resemblance to both Sir Ian and his lady—?"
    "Hannah," she supplied. "You noticed?" Blast! Sometimes the man was far too observant.
    "You have his eyes and her coloring and lovely shape. It occurred to me as I made my way among the sheep that Sir Ian's reaction to me was wholly paternal, rather the way I fancy I would respond if some stranger came looking for Patricia. And it appears